Monday, July 28, 2014

On her way out the back door, Courtni Pugh -- the recently departed Executive Director of SEIU Local 99 -- announced that Scott
Washburn would be taking over as the union’s "Interim Executive
Director."

So who’s Washburn and what's his track record?

Washburn is a longtime SEIU staffer who in 2006 was
appointed as the "Arizona State Director" of SEIU Local 5 and was tasked with boosting SEIU’s membership in the Grand
Canyon State.

Early in 2012, Purple Palace officials created Local 5
out of a top-down merger of three separate SEIU local unions in Texas, Arizona
and Virginia. (WTF?)

So, how did Washburn perform in Arizona?

Not so well.

From 2008 until the end of 2012, Local 5's tri-state membership
plummeted from 4,069 to 1,010 members. Ouch!

And in Arizona, Washburn did even worse.

For example, in 2011, more than 700 city employees in Tempe,
Arizona decertified
SEIU Local 5 to join an independent union called the United Arizona Employee Association.

By 2012, things had gotten so bad that the Purple Palace
pulled the plug on the multi-state merger by splitting Local 5 back into its three
original local unions (Local 5 in Texas, Local 512 in Virginia, and Local 48 in
Arizona).

In Arizona, Washburn performed like a...

Washburn’s "growth strategies" had left SEIU with just 425
members in Arizona, according to records from the U.S. Department of Labor.

So what happened to Washburn?

In typical fashion, he pulled the purple ripcord and landed
a comfortable job on SEIU International’s payroll pocketing than $150,000 per
year.

And there's more.

In addition to Washburn’s underwhelming track
record, Scott has also cultivated many enemies by helping Andy Stern and Dave
Regan carry out SEIU’s heavy-handed raids against rank-and-file workers.

In 2009, Washburn famously deployed himself and many of his Arizona
staff to California to impose SEIU’s trusteeship on healthcare workers inside
SEIU-UHW.

Later that year, Washburn directed Local 5’s staff to conduct an
unsuccessful raid against UNITE HERE
at Phoenix’s Sheraton Convention Center Hotel. That won't win Washburn any
friends at UNITE HERE Local 11 in
Los Angeles.

In 2010, Washburn and his staff spent many more months in
California working on SEIU’s law-breaking Kaiser campaign, where SEIU’s illegal
threats ultimately overturned the election results.

Meanwhile, Washburn has carefully used Andy Stern's trusteeship
as an opportunity to secure full employment for his children. Last year, no
fewer than three of Washburn’s kids were employed by SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan, including
Simon Washburn, Ira Washburn and Hannah Washburn.

Hey Local 99 members -- looks like you got a real winner on
your hands!

Thursday, July 24, 2014

SEIU-style democracy will be on stunning display at the
upcoming convention of SEIU’s National
Association of Government Employees (SEIU-NAGE).

In September, NAGE -- a union of 31,000 mainly government
employees headquartered in Quincy, Massachusetts -- will be holding a three-day
convention at the Golden Nugget Hotel in Las Vegas where delegates will elect
NAGE’s president and Executive Board.

This democracy-fest will be guided by the steady hand of David Holway, who’ll serve as the
master of ceremonies. Holway is a notoriously corrupt member of SEIU’s International Executive Board
and is also the president of NAGE.

Tyrone Freeman and David Holway

When Holway opens the convention with a ceremonious blow of
his gavel, will democracy break out like a horribly infectious case of poison
ivy?

Not exactly.

Check out the list of candidates who are standing for the 47 positions that make up NAGE’s top officers and Executive Board. Below,
Tasty has posted the list of candidates, which comes directly from NAGE’s website.

As you'll see, virtually every single candidate is part of the
"Holway Slate," meaning that David

Holway personally selected them to
run.

Holway loves his golden nuggets

Unfortunately for NAGE’s members, this means the next Executive
Board won’t be doing any performance reviews of Holway or re-thinking his ridiculously
bloated salary. Last year, Holway pocketed $265,909 for being the president of NAGE’s
31,000 members.

That's not all.

Holway is infamous for finding “innovative” ways to
supplement his SEIU paycheck.

In addition to holding a full-time job as the
president of NAGE and serving on SEIU’s International Executive Board, Holway
somehow managed to simultaneously hold down another high-paying job as the
Executive Director of the Massachusetts
Thoroughbred Breeders Association… where he worked tirelessly to encourage more horse racing in
Massachusetts!

For this horse-racing gig, Holway pulled down an additional $100,000 per year and also pocketed 7.5% of the revenues from a racetrack
called Suffolk Downs, according to the Boston
Globe.

It's no wonder that workers have fled SEIU-NAGE so they can
join other unions. During the past five years, NAGE has lost roughly one-third
of its membership, according to records from the U.S. Department of Labor. Just
20 months ago, 2,300 ambulance workers decertified
NAGE and joined AFSCME.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

He was formerly married to SEIU’s Josie
Mooney and is currently the head of the California Federation of Labor.

In 2012, Pulaski famously teamed up with SEIU-UHW’s Dave Regan to engineer
an "emergency" phone call of the Labor Fed’s board in an
unsuccessful effort to roll back the state's landmark nurse-to-patient staffing
ratio law.

Well… Pulaski has made another decision that’s left
observers scratching their heads.

Next week, the California Labor Federation will hold its
biennial convention in San Diego, California. Pulaski has decided to put the
presidents of UNITE HERE (D. Taylor) and SEIU (Mary Kay Henry) on
the same stage.

As you can imagine, the folks over at UNITE HERE are no fans
of Henry and SEIU. Back in 2009, Mary Kay Henry was one of Andy
Stern's key lieutenants who launched SEIU’s multi-million dollar hostile
takeover aimed at seizing control of UNITE HERE and gobbling it up inside of
SEIU.

SEIU’s disastrous scheme -- a byproduct of purple arrogance and imperial
ambitions -- was roundly
condemned by the labor movement.

So what’s Pulaski thinking?

Good question. Here's the announcement.

The 2014 California
Labor Federation Biennial Convention is only 12 days away, and our speaker
lineup is as action-packed as our agenda! We know that in order to win in the
long run we must grow our movement and go on the offense. That’s why we’re
thrilled to announce two keynote speakers who know firsthand what it means to
fight in the trenches, grow their memberships and win.

Be sure to join us
Tuesday, July 29 to hear SEIU International President, Mary Kay Henry and UNITE
HERE President, D. Taylor as each highlight their unique lessons learned from
fighting hard to organize new members, and the importance of expanding our
offensive game to maintain a powerful movement for all workers. You won’t want
to miss this!

This has been by far
one of the toughest decisions I have ever had to make. But after much thought I
have decided to leave my position as Executive Director of SEIU Local 99 to immediately
work to elect pro-worker legislators in the state senate.

According to the announcement, an "Interim Executive
Director” will take over Pugh’s job on July 19.

Quite a trick, right? Rig the vote.
Plunge the union into internal conflict, negative press stories, and pledges of lawsuits to be filed by the union's own members.
And then hightail it out of town!

Friday, July 11, 2014

Today, SEIU President Mary
Kay Henry made "a secret appearance at Local 99 headquarters… to thank
the high-paid staff and management for getting the contract ratified so
quickly," according to an online post by members of Local 99 (see below).

The post asked union members to phone Local 99's office “and
let the receptionist know how you feel and ask her to pass the message to Mary
Kay.”

So what’s Mary Kay Henry doing?

Hmm.... Sounds like one of those unannounced visits to Afghanistan by U.S. presidents aimed at showing confidence to the
troops.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

In Los Angeles, SEIU is making headlines over allegations of
vote-rigging during a contract-ratification vote affecting 33,000
school employees.

Here's what's happening:

SEIU Local 99 has
been negotiating with the Los Angeles
Unified School District on behalf of 33,000 employees who work as teacher
assistants, cafeteria workers, custodians and other positions. At the end of June,
SEIU officials reached a tentative contract settlement and, according to
workers, promptly deployed a bag of purple tricks aimed at winning a membership
ratification vote at any cost.

First, Local 99's Executive Director, Courtni Pugh, ordered a rapid-fire ratification vote
in which fewer than 8% of the workers actually cast ballots. Workers say SEIU failed to
notify many union members about the vote. One writes: “The majority of Unit B
was not notified, emailed, called or texted about the voting.”

Here's another piece of the story from a different Local 99 member:

Currently, many school
employees are on Summer Recess with a majority of school sites closed until mid
August, so lots of people that would have received their information at their
worksite, may never have gotten word of a vote for contract ratification.

Next, SEIU lied about the pay hikes under the tentative
agreement.

The scene inside an SEIU polling place

According to the Los
Angeles Daily News, “Union officials misrepresented that wage hike, passing out fliers and making statements that a 6.64 percent pay raise was ‘guaranteed.’
A close inspection of the contract, however,” revealed that more than 10,000 workers
will receive increases of only 2%, according to the Daily News.

But the vote counting
and contract ratification process was changed at the last minute.

Prior to the three-day
election that started Monday — and for as long as anyone can remember — each of
Local 99’s four bargaining units had the individual right to accept or reject
contracts by vote. The ballots for individual bargaining units — B, C, F and G
— were labeled and printed on different colored paper and listed by the name of
each unit. If a unit rejected the deal, that unit would go back to the
bargaining table.

But as union workers
prepared to tally this contract’s ballots Wednesday night, staff announced a
departure from standard voting procedure: All the ballots would be tossed into
a single pool and tallied together.

The tactic, Local 99
member and former political action committee chair Kathryn Torres said, was the
latest in a series of dishonest and legally questionable plays union staff has
employed.

A faction of members,
Torres said, will be looking to the courts and labor relations board for help.

“We are willing to
take it as far as we have to, because right is right and wrong is wrong,”
Torres said.

After the vote was finished, SEIU officials did backflips
and exchanged high-fives while sending triumphant announcements to the membership. Here's
a message posted by SEIU officials on Local 99’s Facebook page:

We did
it! The votes are counted and we ratified the agreement with LAUSD. 82% VOTED
YES!

Meanwhile, here's how one union member responded:

Yes, you did it
alright. You alienated members by blocking them from your Facebook page when
they dared to disagree with you. You rushed a vote through while many of your
members were out of town. You lied to the media about how much of a raise we
were being offered. You instructed our own union reps to not talk to anyone who
disagreed with the contract. You got us nothing for a raise and yet you charge
us higher union dues than administrators pay. You did it alright. You got me
wondering if there is a way to opt out of the union. I have been told that
there is.

Another member put it this way: “They misled us. That’s why
a lot of us members are upset and angry, because our own union did us dirty…”

In fact, it's long been rumored that Stern and Burger carried
on a secret love affair while they ruled the Purple Palace. Stern, Burger and
their families shared a summer vacation home on the Jersey Shore.

Stern and Hamsher

Near the end of his term as SEIU’s President, according
to Politico, Stern had a two-year romantic relationship with Firedoglake blogger Jane Hamsher.

Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Is Dave Regan’s partnership deal with the California Hospital Association a "visionary"
agreement that’ll help healthcare workers and the public? Or is it SEIU’s latest deep dive into bed with hospital
industry CEOs?

“California Healthline” -- a daily news service run by the nonprofit California Healthcare Foundation -- recently conducted a two-week
online public survey. Survey results? More than 75 percent of respondents say SEIU-UHW
"is getting too close to hospital management."

Apparently,
SEIU couldn't convince an independent journalist to do its dirty work.

So officials inside the Purple Palace turned to "Think Progress." Which just happens to be
run by the "Center for American
Progress” in Washington DC. Which just happens to have pocketed more than
$1 million in payments from SEIU during the past two years, according to SEIU’s
DOL Form LM-2!

As always,
it doesn't take much scratching at the surface to uncover the trail of purple
dollars to the mendacious promoters of purple propaganda.

About Me

Legal Statement:
Sternburgerwithfries.blogspot.com is a labor union related gossip site which publishes rumors, speculation, assumptions, opinions and conjecture in addition to accurately reported facts. Information on this site may or may not be true and sternburgerwithfries.blogspot.com makes no warranty as to the validity of any claims.
If you think there is false info on this site, email me and we can see what we can do, otherwise, just enjoy!